Day 4: ½ of 12 Angry People & Picnic in Hüllen-Hüllen

A sad day for our two juries! After three days of a frenzied surge of impressions, international and critics' jury members now have to sit down, activate the little grey cells, decipher their notes written in a hand tormented by stereoscopic effects, articulate their thoughts and make sober decisions on this year's festival winners.

A gigantic task indeed, but a task our expert minds are definitely up to. We wish our team of jurors a steady hand, a clear eye, an unheated forehead and a strong stomach, while we turn to coming attractions.

Bright Darkness is the name of the programme introducing two of this year's guests in focus, Anja Dornieden and Juan David González Monroy, aka OJOBOCA. Two titles immerse us into borderline worlds of maimed reality and frenzied fantasy. Masked Monkeys take us to Indonesia and introduce us to controversial street art wayang topeng. Trained monkeys perform a series of theatrical gestures, various physical stunts and fall into a trance to the sounds of gamelan percussions. Bizarre masks made of doll heads become the medium they use to contact ancestral spirits and dream world. Disturbing but fascinating scenes of complex routines were given an added touch by a melodious narration composed of excerpts from Thomas E. Hill's Manual of Social and Business Norms, a 19th century text serving as an excellent reminder of how social practices and customs of people across the planet are not always defined by common sense, but often spring from intangible, insane strivings. Cloud Shadow brings us to an empty cave which has engulfed the entire population of the nearby town of Hüllen-Hüllen and turned it into a magnificent wall decoration by way of a mysterious projection machine. Silent visual testimonies are transferred from their polyphonic kaleidoscopic form into a slow dissolveshow accompanied by text found at the scene. Instead of an explanation, we get a picturesque report about a fragile utopia, enwrapped in a disturbingly dystopian (traumatoscopic!) aura. See you (brrrr…) at 4pm at the MM Centre.

After fresh traumas, we look forward to our favourite fuzzy, squinty, mumbling TV inspector and trench coat enthusiast, Columbo – this time on the big screen at the SC Cinema (6pm). In case we forget what we came for, Sebastian Buerknerwill remind us with a series of intrusive experimental bursts into the narrative tissue of a crime investigation (code: Reunion). The poor Columbo will become hostage to Buerkner's projection performance, forced to fight against a whole range of side effects for which he could in no way prepare (flickering schizophrenic ghosts, association games, crazed umbrellas…) and we will get a spectacular finish of this year's Jury's Choice.

At 20pm, dissolved in the auditorium of the SC Cinema, we will eagerly await for our jury's and audience's decisions, put our hands together and once again see all the award-winning films. With a bit of luck, our story will end with less Kafkaesque absurdity than the one from Hüllen-Hüllen, but the scenes imprinted on our retinas will definitely keep us in euphoric expectation of a new encounter next year.

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